NC-SARA

NC-SARA stands for the National Council of the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement. The council is in charge of SARA, the agreement among the member states, districts, and territories that establishes comparable national standards for interstate offering for distance education. The Federal government does not have federal requirements over distance education providers. The agreement allows us to provide distance education across state lines by placing states in a mutual reciprocity agreement. The only state not a member of SARA is California, and this leads states that want to offer courses in California or students from California with needing to carefully follow the California state rules and make individual agreements. Outside states can be denied to provide services in California because they are not a SARA member. There are 4 regional compacts and UW is part of the WICHE compact.

The State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, commonly known as SARA, provides a voluntary, regional approach to state oversight of postsecondary distance education.  When states join SARA, they agree to follow uniform processes for approving their eligible institutions' participation.  They also agree to deal with other states' SARA institutions in a common way when those institutions carry out activities in SARA states other than their own.

SARA's policies help protect students and provide benefits to both states and institutions carrying out distance education in multiple states.  As of July 2019, 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are members of SARA.  About 1,993 colleges and universities. For more information please visit the website at https://nc-sara.org/